the whackness

things to think on:

1. fantasies of control: check.  because being nuttier than an outhouse rat requires certain parameters, planning, ground rules.

tying into number 1 is 2. i'm not "one of those people who [blank]."  don't fill in that blank.  types are excusable up to a certain point, but after that point, either attempt to get the real story, or get out the kitchen.  it's partially womanly orneriness, i totally admit that, but don't even try to threaten my originality.  i don't always get it right, but nine times out of 10 i have been THROUGH it with myself before it gets presented for public view, and though i may not deserve respect for that in others' eyes, in my own, that attribute is about the only thing in me that does deserve it.  i may not be pretty, polite, considerate, or receptive enough, but i am trying my ass off to be responsible for what's inside me.  call it control freakishness if you will.  i don't think that's an inaccurate diagnosis.  but i am making one hell of an effort to be what i think i ought to be--and what i think i ought to be is what i am, plus what's possible.  so there's a lot to try for.

not sure precisely what prompted this.  something like: it's totally possible that people are an equation, a la tom stoppard's arcadia sort of.  but if so, it's a divine equation.

nothing...nothing...nothing

monody

i turned your name into a bell. it was nothing more than the name of you that i hollowed, that i fashioned, and i knew it as nothing more than your name

which was why it moved with each wind.

oh my love, oh my love,
i turned your name into a bell.


meditations of the beast

once, in those hours in your arms,
once, i unseamed my eyes,
seeing the moon shrouded
in mist, or, if there was no mist,
in what i felt, and i felt,
for once, it bridged,
the gap between truth and lies,

that between what one controls
and what one knows, the moon,
floating, enhazed, is,
lustrous
constant
in the naked sky.

urgle grue pt. 2 or so

i'm realizing that this story i'm currently working on (with reluctance--it's not an easy write, i think in part because it's been so long since i've written a first draft that i can't quite stop expecting more than is happening from myself) is, like, weird to try and pull together.

the early parts of a story seem to be mostly babble, for me (again, this is the first draft experience--it's interesting as such). i mean, i have a core idea, but of course, being me, i don't know what it is. it manifests itself as a symbol, or a...what's a word i can borrow from some other discourse, for kicks? a moment--a singularity. something that stays deeply meaningless. when i've hit the right singularity, then everything in me can draw up to the thing--like the jar up to which the hill came--and bits of myself start getting thrown at it, changed in the spectrum of the light that refracts from it, but still entirely identifiable.

the fact that i actually at this point know enough to SAY this, to put a process to the action of writing a story i've never written before, maybe means that this book will be better than the last. i doubt it, though. i think i might be villette-ing myself. not that the first book was even close to being a jane eyre, and not that villette isn't a freaking FABULOUS book in its own right, but it's not the same as jane eyre. it's not. villette is a work of genius, but maybe it's not a masterpiece--or it's both a work of genius and a masterpiece, but it's just...not jane eyre.

it might be that i'm addicted to rewriting the book i know.

none of this matters, of course. i am interested in the process, though. it's almost necessary to pontificate about the process precisely because i'm so damn unsure of myself. i like things like ground rules, boundaries...there aren't any with the new book, except to get everything in there that feels like it ought to be there, which is helpful, in a way, but only in a way. i'm going to forget something, is the fear, or lie about something--put something in there that doesn't need to be there. the last book was kind of a flight of fancy; this one is sticking low to the ground, said ground as defined by what i know.

which is, i'm afraid, making it boring. but it's a first draft. it doesn't have to be interesting until the second. i'm not sure why i'm so focused on the end product. i seem to be preoccupied with what my brain wants me to be preoccupied with, however--there's something to that.

oppositions, and the way they twist. and eternal love, unfortunately. depression, and not knowing yourself, and the weird possibilities that hover between memory and imagination. an uncomfortable display of my current preoccupations, in fact. rrr. but i have to write it. it'd be stupid to reject a gift like the end of plot-block just because i'm kind of afraid--kind of really really afraid.

12

meditations of the beast

earth and sky

unbroken, tight
and unceasing as shackles--

air, light, dirt, everything,

unending, massed hostlike,

the press of hot things,

bodily and burned sacred.

break and writhe,

you, uncleanly thing,

and befoul heat itself

with your strangled release,

and you, dark receptacle

and you, dark receptacle

cleave to yourself

cleave yourself

and break yourself

and break yourself

for everything else

is too ready to spill you

if you dont spill yourself.

11

quietus (in translation)

i see your face

as if transient, in a dream,

my first and last love--

the retching

stickiness

of memory

and the wrench

of distance

a hand that wishes to

hold nothing

yet

lets nothing go

a wretched
and circular
desire.

i read your face

as if in memory

dearest

i read and rend your face

as if from memory.

a hand i once held

is over-full of memory

and my own hand

is over-full

of shadow--
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.

fullness--i was

robbed

of fullness,

and hang,

sick,

like a crescent moon,

somewhere between day

and hungering night

while night

empties her budget

into her own
hollowness.

10

milton

crush

flesh

to dark

ness.

the tower

built

of raw dark

the up-

thrusting

thing

against

its ideal

turn it

real

taste

of yellow

roses

the stalklike

mark

on creamy

forearm

i was in the darkness, though.

but it was a meat darkness.

i pushed my way out

and there was meat for days.

dark night doth do stuff something something receipt

no experience out-weirds the experience of going through this repressed memory thing.

there are some metaphors that are more than metaphors, because they're exact, and carry truth--like, the experience of listening to one's heartbeat is a metaphor, provided one doesn't have a stethoscope, because there's no actual sound, but at the same time it's not a metaphor, because one is hearing the sensation, in a really weird way--the elision of sound and touch, in that example, is kind of like the way that "iron" is both a one- and two-syllable word. sort of.

and with this memory stuff, it's like my brain is throwing up. really. it's like, i shake violently, i usually end up saying "no" a lot, my mind focuses on some more-than-image, the image-plus gets examined/shaken until its message becomes manageable, spit-up-able, vomitable, and then i sit there with the resulting feeling for what feels like the same amount of time as it takes to recover from throwing up, and then i go back to being me. the curtain descends; everything ends. for the moment. so weird.

today, apparently, it was necessary that i acknowledge that a certain chair is my chair. what the hell that means i pretty much don't know, but i do feel better.

except my body is freaking haywire. i have prickles in my arms and legs, and what feels like a low fever, except it isn't making me feel anything more than just hot-ish. what i figure is that maybe the memory thing is putting stress on my system, and my system, which is prone to blood sugar issues, is responding to that stress with weird diabetic symptoms. i haven't slept at night in over a month...that is, i've slept at night, but not before 3 in the morning, and usually after 4...

it might just be diabetes, of course.

"my chair." sure, memory, whatever you think is best. i'm probably not dealing with this correctly. it's just that up until this last little darkest-night-memorying-up-its-receipt moment, i was still pretty on the fence about whether or not it was actually happening to me--so much fun to feel like maybe my imagination is capable of making up what i've been remembering. the weirdest of all weirds is that my whole self-person-object all snaps back into place when the remembering's over...which is why i think the memory waited until now to manifest itself--my sense of who i was wasn't strong enough to withstand this before.

something about the nature of patterns.

i remember with fondness the days when this used to be a poetry blog.

said it all before

i think i may have met the most beautiful woman in the world. i saw her once, thought i'd never see her again, and then she showed up where i was today, and she'll be where i am for the next month at least...

what it mainly means is either that i've got to stop doing this, or start accepting it. i expect myself to control my longings because i don't have the courage to act on them...because longings contain danger, the danger of acting like an idiot, or hurting someone else...and i always felt that courting danger was self-indulgence. and self-indulgence means getting away from the source--the source of information, inspiration, etc. you can only find out what you already know from an event you create. this is why i'm willing to try everything that's been ordered at a table when dining out, but don't want to order myself. in some ways the demands i make on experience are really incredible: i do expect to find eternity in a grain of sand, if i keep my mind open and focus my attention to the degree possible. and that's why i feel like i've lived so fully, even though i've never done anything at all--i've been paying attention. compulsively.

but then she, or someone like her, comes along, and of course i don't know what to do. i don't know how to involve anyone else in my life, which is so private and so filled with my own observations. i'm so chock-full of myself that there's no room for anyone else. i want to fall in love--i want to openly, honestly, and hopefully, admire the most beautiful woman in the world, but i can't--i can't hope; it would be wrong. i can't want; that would also be wrong. it's not a question of self-control for self-control's sake; it's a question of self-control in the absence of any other viable alternative.

that's the crux of my attitude, isn't it: to hold on, until something better comes along. thus far it's worked, kind of. i always have to hold on for a long time, but when the something better does come, it's always wonderful, and i'm always alive to it, which is important.

oh god, the blah blah.

addendum to previous

i realize that when i say i don't believe in fighting for what one wants, i mean that in a pretty specific manner. it's a personal thing, and wholly dependent on the fact that i already have almost everything i want--and i so much more than have everything i need. the line between acting shakespeare and singing opera probably looks pretty thin to someone worrying about their next meal or their physical safety.

i mean, i've never had to fight for anything. society is designed to help pretty white girls with their problems. bizarre as it sounds, i actually have some limited, lame-ass, but possibly applicable quasi-firsthand perspective on this because of the experience with the d.u.i. the way the system treats you is not a joke. at times it can be almost intolerable. and i'm just talking about my stupid first offense d.u.i.--i mean, the d.u.i. wasn't a joke, but my sentence was light, the whole thing was probably about the easiest experience i could have had, all things considered, and still i got a feeling at times that i was being, like, ground down. either you do it their way, or you get further punished. and when their way is gross and petty and tyrannical, when their way is concerned with making you do things the way they say to rather than accomplishing anything remotely rational, you start thinking, okay, what purpose is this serving? and the answer is, it's turning you into what they want. and again, i'm talking only about my one, reasonably light brush with the law. what it's like if you actually get in deep trouble i can't imagine.

so i know, from being, however gently, on the wrong side of this, and from feeling how that feels, and then comparing it with my more usual experience, that i get treated better than i deserve. i don't have to fight for what i want; i just have to decide what it is, and about a million people are there to help me to do it, to tell me i can do it, to encourage me. strangers do not view me with suspicion or distrust--they go out of their way to help me--and it's because i'm white, middle class, and a girl. it's so damn unfair.

anyway, that's what i mean by not going for what one wants. the option of navigating the flow as it comes*, as i'm talking about doing so, at least, is a product of situation. i should never try to generalize. it just makes me sound like an idiot. ha ha, "never generalize."

and me having a temper tantrum about dealing with bureaucracy is kind of indicative of the fact that i am in this privileged position. at the first sign of things not being custom-fit to my circumstances, i get all blah blah and whatnot. of course, i have reasons. i do have reasons. within my circumstances, being condemned to take this class could have startlingly negative repercussions. and being me, i have to think that that's not unimportant. and as a universal application of some principle of cause and effect, there may be a lesson or something to learn here. but. the example itself, and the method of dealing with it, is oh so very circumstantial. i should have acknowledged that while writing it down previously.

*what is this, an entry about kidney stones?

GRRAUGH

okay, there are times when you decide to be a woman, not a child--to not resent something you can't change, to rise above the situation and make an effort to realize that the world is not always designed for your convenience and begging it to conform itself to your needs is beneath your dignity.

and then there are times when you pout, and you fucking cut off your nose to spite your own fucking face. the situation isn't going to be any more what i want it to be if i don't take the high road, here, but at least i'll have the satisfaction of not doing what i don't want to.

i'm just so mad. and it's about something stupid and petty, but it's also about something that's going to make next semester hell for me, and i don't deserve to be put through hell again. i've been in a working definition of hell since last november, and although it's been the most wonderful time of my life in some ways, it's also been, well, hellish, and if i didn't have a method of managing pain that most people would not understand the mechanics of, i'd have broken--i'd be breaking now--and nobody gets it, and i'm okay with that because some types of strength are a matter of loneliness, but if i could, i'd demand to be treated the way i ought to be treated by this fucking bureaucratic ridiculousness. this is the response to any situation: "we don't care, and we really don't want to get involved. please see the handbook re: why."

but that's deceptive, because when you read the handbook, the words "we're too chickenshit to handle you" are nowhere in the explanatory paragraphs.

so the solution is to just take the class, and not let it get to me. not let myself get worked up, not let myself care, not let myself engage. i already know how to do what it's going to ask of me, and i do it to my own satisfaction, and my standards are high. so this useless, stress-inducing class will be a time in which i can practice sleeping with my eyes open. which will be a useful skill to acquire.

i guess i don't believe in fighting for what one wants. i think that kind of thing sort of dulls creativity. you take what you have, and either turn it into what you want, or see what in it is what you actually want. i started singing because i considered myself too tall to act shakespeare--and singing has turned into more than i'd ever imagined; it's turned me into a better actress than i'd thought myself capable of being; it's allowed me to find things in myself, to interface with the world, to...know the reason i have to make myself heard.

and i haven't sung more than a few hours since school ended, because stupid hell-existence has at this point taken away my knowledge of my connection to sound. i know it's just reformulating, and the fear will go back to a manageable point, and my voice will turn itself into a sound again, but...ARGH. i blame in part a similar class that i had to take last year, for the anxiety and the agony that this summer thus far has to some degree put me through. i mean, i'm blogging at 4 in the morning. i'm not well, here. after the weeks of being afraid of the dark, it's mostly just habit by this point...

but i have reasons to not want to take this class. and there's no room for reason in any handbook i've ever read.

when are you going to learn, sra, that school isn't there to teach you what you need to know, but rather what it wants you to know? well, apparently never.

9

i wept in a dream

"i want to put my mouth

to the comet's trail

and dye my hands

in fire," she said,

and i cannot do so without you.

and i cannot do so without you.

her insistence on my presence

is why i twine my hands with hers,

though her skin chills

and her mouth glitters

with something

that looks like blood.

there are comets

in the early morning

for her to mouth

and she brings me with her

and she plunges me into fire.

everywhere my skin touches, i feel you.

every place my blood beats, you are there.

at least you are there.

8

zinc metaphor

(deep in the caverns

of my heart

there is a coin.

it has two faces

unchanging

and the metal

in the center

writhes

between them,

turned liquid

under pressure.)

turn away,

turn away life

and refold me

in the cypress' gentle arms

and come aground,

the stopped heart,

come aground

and bear me

in your crucible

of unbreathing blood.

deep between

the walls of two visions

creams

a plane beyond time

weaving itself

of motion and desire:

spill me there,

white heart,

away from the bone depth

of your drought--

spill me out

beyond sight's sapped and disparate apocrypha,

splitting

with wetted lemon sound,

self-enfolding.

7

veronica

but no one thought

and no one guessed

what the cloth caught

when it took his impress.

and no one heard

and no one saw

what the cloth learned

when it touched to his jaw.

my lord i begged

to be thrown away

but i received your dregs

and so i was saved.

my lord i cried

to be left unannealed

but away i was prized

and so i was pealed.

my lord, it was dark

in the place where i lay

until you lifted me up

into the light of your day

and blinded me to all but your way.

and bound me, bound me, bound me to your way.

6

ich grolle nicht

strange

this search

for a word--

the word

of

looking

gilt

in its face,

or that

of fashioning

guilt

into some sort of

mirror.

i've cracked

in a space

delimned

by waiting

and shards

have fallen

to a pavement,

they refract

light, like

sun on lips,

and the light

shines up over

my face--

almost as if

i can feel

its glimmer,

the image

of

guilt

is my image

and my image

silvers

gilt's

visage.

also, coupling is europe's way of proving that english t.v. is better than ours. i'm not arguing, i'm just saying. yeah, sure, sra, why not waste a bottle or two of beringer proving that?

5

resonance

dear reader,

i am writing words

for the express purpose

of turning off

my mind.

my hands have

shaken other hands

and shaken by themselves:

the above exemplifies

description.

my hands have turned

like leaves falling from trees

into words in my own hands

and this is how

i have

and will

destroy

my own self

and not wait

for winter

white and cloudless

as raw pelting grains

of white rice

to do it for me.

the above

exemplifies

metaphor.

4

roses

push the sweet dank rot

out the red lips

coated like with lipstick

and we pushed

together.

fold, please--

re-pleat. please.

fold.

3

dearest

thickset stalks of memory

fold against each other,

something improbable

slithering between

the upright sheaves.

i weave my image

with broken thread

and i weave with

sounds like

cold glass breaking

in heat. so that

it shimmers

so that

i need not

see

the thing

that waits

for the harvest

to show.

2

raucous freshness

this is a story i have told myself already:

but a hand reached out

of that fiery, turgid depth.

it was a shaken and pale shoot

and it was mine.

i looked at it. it plunged into

the presence of you as if

into water.

as if

into

water,

distilled

and shattered

against

a pit

of glass:

smooth

and clear

as inverted

sunlight.

my love demands

what it can:

this

very heart

is yours.

save

me

from

my own

flesh.

here we go again

new monster

there is no revelation

besides remembrance.

there is no tide

aside from blood

and all about

in the sick dark

there is a pull--

as if new beasts

stretched their mouths,

there is a rhythm

to this rotted-sweet

lack of light.

never recommend sports

torque

a tongue of flame
writhes into
this page.

inviolate
the word
that burns,
outside and in.

though the skin
of the word
splits and
torques,
dead,
the word
cannot be
touched. rise,

word, to own
your naked
glory.

um...

okay, i've been thinking about this, though i couldn't tell you why, and here it is:

this is an example of gertrude stein-ian mathematics, as far as i, a person who doesn't much understand gertrude stein and who has no mathematical training, would see it:
a = /x/,
where /x/ is just about anything.

where this "principle" comes from is one of the basic premises of math, one that even i know, the idea, or acknowledgment, that we let x = x. this would be the hegelian ground of algebra, at least: its logic is founded upon the idea that x is allowed to equal x. but gertrude stein points out in her oh-so-annoying way that x doesn't equal x, not entirely, ever. the repeat never is the same as the original (which is what one might call the pet semetary principle)--you can't just reanimate x in a different iteration and CALL it completely the same thing. to acknowledge the force of desire in the equation--the desire to let x = x, to let one's understanding turn the second x into a thing that functions in exactly the same way as the first x, to let oneself deny that second x, because it is forced into functioning like first x, is any different from first x--is to acknowledge that the "equals" sign itself is at issue. The meaning of "=" is not what one would expect. It implies a limiting function. It is not a...um, is "naive" the term? If so, it is not a naive symbol.

anyway. so. the principle of a = /x/ is not outside of the above-stated hegelian ground, i'd argue (though maybe there are easier ways of going about examining said idea)--that is, said idea is not outside the province of the "=" sign with a program, the non-naive "=". if "=" implies aegis on the part of the one doing the equalling, then a = /x/ doesn't challenge that. it doesn't presuppose a purely-functioning "=", one free from any machination on the part of the equaller. what it does do is acknowledge the possibilities of the "let"-tedness of "=". what else can one let x equal, and why? the answer, as far as i can understand it, is anything, provided that the reasoning is allowable, and there is no reasoning that is un-allowable, necessarily.

(i think a mathematics based on william carlos williams would state that x does NOT = x--or, within the shadow of the formula, that the first command of a proof would be "do not let x = x." and to a great extent, this is totally valid--but, within the hegelian shadow, flipping the equation to its opposite doesn't do anything intrinsic to the equation itself. it sets up a fascinating new world, but not one with any more truth to it than the original. an antithesis can be no truer than its thesis. and, in defense of thought, thesis/antithesis isn't how thought works, as far as i can tell--nor is it precisely how dub-cee-dub [yeah, i'm going to let "dub-cee-dub" = william carlos williams, but in the '90's and it's his emcee name, because i can] worked, because if he had worked within the parameters of "do not let x = x," he would not have had metaphor, and paterson wouldn't have happened. so either paterson etc. is a failure, or the success of non-antithetical thinking on his part. i prefer the second reading. i might be wrong, and it would be fun to find that out, but for now i'll leave it.)

why write the equation "a = /x/" as opposed to "x = /x/"? um, because the first one sprang to mind first, but also because "x = /x/" is implied in "a = /x/". why not write it "/x/ = a"? because that's not the truth i'm trying to establish as extant. of course /x/ = a--if /x/ is everything, pretty much, than it's also a. "a = /x/" is more to the point.

the idea of absolute "=" is on the list. i'm sort of spiralling around the idea that happened in my thesis last year, and so absolute "=" might already be accounted for, but i don't think it is. i don't know. i just...might as well think about stuff while i have the time. as a disclaimer, i'm not saying this thought is original in the slightest. it's original to me, because as always my knowledge base is far too insufficient, and i don't know where to start looking for the right stuff, and i'm kind of an idiot. but i'm totally down with it turning out to be extreeemely derivative, and i apologize if it even looks like i think i know what i'm doing.

really really really not worth anyone's time

i think maybe i'll start being more shallow.

i'd never really thought of this as an option before, but circumstances dictate that opportunity is ripe for something to be done, and why not have it be this? you know? i mean, i spend a lot of time saying, "who am i? what am i doing wrong? what am i missing? why am i missing it? WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?" and it does not, technically, get me anywhere (partially because it points out the fact that i might not be shallow, but i am certainly self-obsessed).

hey, that's just not true. self-recrimination masquerading as self-obsession gets me a lot of places. but i've already been to said places. i want to try out something new.

yeah, this neue wege will not last the night, i'm pretty sure. it's the same mania that used to infect me after watching too much queer as folk season 1. i used to get drunk and want to be brian kinney. right now i just want revenge on all the men who have made me feel like a freak for years and years and years because i don't know how to play idiotic games, or play them by the wrong rules. again, this probably won't last the night.

also, on a side note, who likes fluffy cake? what's the point there? dense cake is so much better. the end.

maybe it's like maggie says of joel: i'm hopelessly helpless--a helplessness junkie.

thank you laura riding, for making us laugh at love...again

sweet capitalist night

it is after a long day of hiding from the sun

i reject you, extrinsic warmth, and

the intrusion upon focus

that

summer's beating light

implies.

memories

one can't wish for:

the feel of hot

skin against

hot

asphalt--

the black radiance

of the playground.

i was not brave enough

to go into day

and so i imbibed

the observed surfaces

with all senses,

my attention to detail

as exquisite and wary

as some fine-lashed

herbivore's.

it was a process

of exchange

like that

of breath:

to become

what others

could love.

i am not remotely content

with myself.

draughting

i put together a book--sort of a frankenstein thing--of poems i'd written just before/as i was redrafting the novel for the first time, and find it interesting, and a little frightening, to see how my philicosophical bent has changed as regards words and imagery. i'm not going to put it up yet, because i like it but i don't think it's strong. i feel like what i've been writing recently (aside from all this rambling prosody) is strong, self-confident, but what i wrote then was enraged and self-immolate, and it's hard to let that go again, if that makes sense.

this is neither here nor there. what i wanted to say is that i feel like my relationship with words has changed, and i can see it both in the poetry and in the novel. i don't think i'm going to try to publish the novel. it's good--i know it's good--but it's also weak, like the poetry. at the time i was trying to deal with the arbitrariness of language, which sounds like a pretty dull and overdone concept, but...yeah, in conjunction with both death of some people i loved, and love of someone, that arbitrariness became painful to the point of concretization, of specificity, which is important. the novel is to some degree about the way in which nothing makes sense--the procedures by which nothing makes sense, a little like the man in the high castle, but, you know, i hadn't read that yet when i was writing it, and also nothing like because that high castle book is awesome. and the poetry, i feel like, expresses the same sort of idea, of the extreme detachment between symbol and meaning, and a person's helplessness before that detachment. this is either over-simplification or over-glorification, but it'll stand: as usual, the argument goes, i might as well take my crap seriously because it doesn't hurt anyone else for me to take it seriously.

i feel like now i write like a person who believes that words are...disattached enough from meaning that one can create one's own connections. not necessarily will-you nil-you, but the sheerest implication can be gotten away with if one treats it like a fact (this is de man, to some extent, right?). i'm big on smells right now: words have odors, or they function as odiferous. it's like combining beets and walnuts, or leeks and sweet potatoes, or trying to think of a recipe that involves the showiness of black lentils in the taste of their possible beauty--odor leads to taste, recombinant and sharply correct or sharply not so; color leads to odor, or maybe, factually, the other way around...

why am i writing about this? oh yeah--i don't know why.

triumph!

...and another. check it out! under "books," on the sidebar. i'm pretty excited about this. i admit that it's mostly because of the formatting opportunities. there's nothing i like better than playing around with typefaces. which is really really pathetic, actually.

the poetry isn't improving much as i type it in, but i am spending a lot of time with this seal c.d., so that's to the good (?). i spent the summer between freshman and sophomore years of college listening to "station to station," "ziggy stardust," and "raw power." mmh, "raw power." anyway, those c.d.s really created an atmosphere for that summer in my memory--and i feel like this summer is going to be the summer of black sabbath, helmet's betty, ann peebles' album i can't stand the rain, and seal. classical music, for me, is the apotheosis of feeling--which means that it reflects nothing, or if it does reflect, you're not listening to it right (which is one of many of my problems with the radio station at 102.1, and, incidentally, one of my not-a-few problems with e.m. forerster [sp?]). popular music, if i'm listening to it properly, can be the same, but it's doesn't have to be necessarily--it can be a reflective surface, though with music like that on i can't stand the rain, or the replacements' let it be before i listened it to death, i do tend to get into it to the extent that sometimes, like listening to callas sing verdi or price sing puccini, i just can't breathe.

i'm making a distinction that doesn't really hold up, but hopefully one sees what i'm reaching toward. the point is, that i feel like the black sabbath/helmet/peebles/seal continuum is pretty indicative of where i am right now. i'm trying to pummel all the self-lies out of my system, and it can get ugly, because i don't know what i'm doing. or where i'm going, for that matter. take that, eliza doolittle-in-pygmalion-the movie actress! or if i can manage said lie-out-pummeling to an acceptable extent. or if i want to.

yeah, i feel like reading a lot of '70's harlequin romances and putting "kiss from a rose on the grave" on repeat will certainly help to solve the piece of crap that is my personality.

ed-cetera (redux, probably)

these color edits may be very unattractive. i acknowledge that.

anyway, i did it! there's a book up on the sidebar.

a hearty red rooming

or i'm not good enough.

like the embers of jane eyre's defiance of john reed after she's thrust into the red room, a bit of distance from the rejection and the fire dies down: i am not good enough. maybe. well, it's certainly possible.

and in a way, i blame emily dickinson for why i keep trying to believe in myself: it's easier for me to write for the equivalent of my trunk with her example before me. because obviously i don't get published for the same exact reasons as she didn't: my genius is just too broad for my times. that was a joke. but it was also kind of a wish. it would be nice to have some vindication for all the years of being kind of a secret freakshow, all the years of chronicling my secret difference. ah, who am i kidding? i just want to be emily dickinson...and who wouldn't?

oh, and b-t-dub, i think this next series will be written to the music of seal's album "seal." i don't think there's any real need to decide whether this is cool or incredibly lame.

you know what? in honor of emily dickinson (or whatever), i too will reformat my crap into books on the internet. i'm going to turn each of them into their own separate blog on the internet, and then connect them to this one. in honor of the fact that publication by the man is the man's mind's auction, but self-publication on the internet is the auction of an attempt at self-justification.

quietus III

i.

in my mind's sight i saw a door. it wasn't so much one door as all doors, the concept of a door, which is never not in motion.

i broadened the strip of my eyesight into a predator's horizon, let in the riot of light at the periphory of vision. the action in me mimicked the strip of light at the edge of the door. slowly that strip expanded like light itself.

when the door opened, i closed my eyes again, but the door would not close, because closure was impossible.

ii.

my heart beat as one but it was tared out into two: the heart at the left and the heart at the right. like wings that beat together because they could not do otherwise, my heart beat. i wrapped my heart in feathers smelling of the wax that stuck them together

and, in flight, felt the skin of the sun on my face, saw the jewel blaze of the sun's eyes, felt the touch of the sun's burning mouth, the sweet salt taste of sunlight and the smell of

something melting.

if my heart was ill-devised wings, the smell of heating wax was my heart melting. my heart, falling apart, riven side from side, dripping like wings. it ran over my two hands.

and you were the sun.

run down

my throat

and coat

my word

with raw

fire.

the taste

like honey,

the copper

of pain,

and wax,

because

i gave you

my heart

and therefore

it is yours,

and therefore

when it melts

it is you

that melts,

i say,

so let me

dream

your taste--

honestly,

i care

so little

for

the truth.

my poetry has been rejected twice today.

i've written about this before, though i'm not sure where or when: rejection is awesome. it's hard and it sucks, but it's great. there's nothing like the feeling of knowing that the worst has happened--i mean, not the overall worst, of course, but the worst as far as the submission itself goes. there are times when it's not the worst--when you feel like a company (i'm talking singing now) is playing games that you're not interested in playing, and that the rejection stems from that--in a way, that's worse than getting rejected flat out for being not what the publication is looking for--or not being good enough.

i'm not past the point of caring. that would be a sucky point to be at. but my particular fire blazes well when fed by the fuel of actual adversity. that is probably too broad of a claim. what i mean is, that being rejected just makes me think, not "they're idiots, and they should have accepted me," but "i'm good." i'm good. being rejected proves that i am good somehow.

when i get accepted, i have say things like, "oh, i don't know why they chose me, tee hee," and it's sincere, because that's the way i am. but when i get rejected, i get to know it: i'm good, and if they don't want me, it's not because i'm bad.

this is with poetry. it isn't so much like this with singing.

it is because they don't see what i'm doing, or if they see what i'm doing they aren't interested in it--which is their loss. i can say it's their loss because i assume that it's a loss they freely accept--if i said to someone in regards to their having rejected my writing, "it's your loss," they'd probably laugh slightly and tell me to keep up the attitude. and having already rejected me, i know that my thinking it's their loss is not of particular interest to them, if you see what i'm getting at. they're not idiots. they just don't get it, and possibly they don't want it. and that's fine.

i'm kind of over thinking that my work isn't good enough. that's a mid-twenties thing. the truth is that i knew, when i wrote the first of the poems to my muse, that i was writing actual poetry. that was at least five years ago. before that, yes, sure, my poems might have been well-worded, but they weren't anything special, because they weren't saying anything i didn't already know, and i knew that. but now my work has animus--it has its own soul. not every sample of it. there are weak poems and strong poems, and it can be hard to know which is which.

there's no point to this. i'm not even trying to make myself feel better. there are no words to the feeling i'm currently experiencing, and that's kind of the definition, to me, of a feeling worth not attempting to temper. my poems are good. they're private and at times incomprehensible, but they're good. ha ha, one at this point falls back on emily dickinson's idea of publication. she wasn't alone in believing herself good. but she was alone.

it's a treasure, to be able--to be allowed--to believe in yourself when things are apparently against you. i very much appreciate it, as well as the opportunity to exercise said belief.

everything is available-ated

being the slow ass that i am, i didn't precisely realize this until like a second ago, but a blog really is a distinct organism, isn't it? like, i do a lot more in here than i could either in published form (faint mollification for the fact that i remain unpublished on paper, but something, right?) or in diary form. i can throw stuff in here that works with my rhizomatic understanding of how my life and thoughts come together to "create" "poetry," such as this thought, for instance, without going all poetic journal in the thirties t.s. eliot with it (again, like i could ever have gotten published in that chicago thing [i don't remember if that's where t.s. eliot published, either, but i know he published somewhere]). because, see, i know that poetic essays usually sound like CRAZY PEOPLE have written a series of words on a page and we're all supposed to take them seriously (see proprieception), either this, which is preferable, or they pretend like they make sense by arguing through something carefully to the point that we all realize that there is no argument, no point, and possibly no god (see something about w.c.w's moveable iamb thing by some woman whose name i don't remember but might be diane). but in a blog, rambling is expected, encouraged, possibly enjoined.

and because i like to ramble while producing sentences that fall within the province of pretty prosaic english language, these odd essay things i put on here, which aren't poetry but are sometimes closely related to poetics (and sometimes are related to poetics just by proximity), wouldn't work at all as a series of kora in hell-style fragmentations (not in the least because i'm no william carlos williams). unlike william carlos williams, i don't pretend that i'm doing anything new; i'm not particularly interested in newness. newness requires direction, an impersonal sense of trajectory--i'm not interested in anything impersonal.

transparency would be one frame to put around that which the blogging format has provided me. i exist in constellation on this blog (william carlos williams would approve!), and no grass grows on the lines between word and word. that's a poetic way of saying that all my inconsistencies are wildly available in this format, and i like that. i want it recorded that there was a day on which i knew myself in love, and another day on which i passed it off as metaphor or worse. nothing is permanent, nothing is un-adjustable; everything is just available. which sounds like a somewhat dirtier movie than the one that frodo starred in, but i didn't see everything is illuminated, nor read the book (hey, good as it looked, it was published after 1950), so i don't know.

i like growing up. it scares me, but i like it. for instance, black sabbath is a descendant of led zepplin. i could have read that on the internet, but i prefer to find it out myself. and ann peebles is amazing.

my love, yet not my love

tarot card visual

i'm not like anything
you know.

for one,
i gather the fabric
of what you do to me
in two hands

and like a
lovesick bird
the air,
i wring from it
a flight,
my beating heart

like a velvet wing,
launching toward
the taut sun, the sun
of your face.
i wrap my wrists

in the fabric
of this feeling,
twisting,

midair.


-----
i give up. it's over. i'm not sure what i've been holding, but i give it away. i surrender it. i give it over. I WANT YOU. i cut my lips on wanting. my eyes are wet with desire. i'm cracked, dead without you. come to me--come back to me. don't punish me with your distance, the fact that you don't know any of this--i call to you--you must know, you must understand, it's been years, and i've tried to tell myself that it isn't real, that you don't mean anything beyond a symbol. but you grow in my heart, white rose. my heart which is nothing more than a black lake and a black sky--i don't know what you're doing there--i don't know how you survive there, and i don't know how to make you mine...

i dream of touching your lips with mine and it's like the world shimmers and then shatters completely. how can a surrounding world be black and white and yet filled with gold and silver? i long for you. it's that simple. it's that terrifying, and completely irrational, but--

in a way it's ridiculous that i write poetry at all. i'm in many senses a very rational person. i don't believe in succumbing to what i can avoid succumbing to. there are other reasons for it to be ridiculous, such as an intense lack of personal experience, but a lot of it has to do with that, that i just have no problem with forcing myself to the point of zero before i'll allow myself to experience ANYTHING. and even then, i just want to get it done. i'll admit to this love. i'll ask for her to come to me. i'll acknowledge that my need for her is stronger than the fear that i'll hurt her irrevocably. but only because it seems the only logical solution to the issue of what i feel, how i long, how it burns to want her.

stupid capricorn passions. practically impossible to ignite; even more impossible to MAKE GO AWAY. i guess i don't know what i'd spend my time doing if not this.

...not tori. not sure that qualifies as a joke.

spelling

like a woman cocooned
i will wait here,
silk-twined,
for meaning to touch
my face
like naked sunlight.

if my bound shape
liquefies, pressed,
repressed,
into predetermined newness--
the fugal t,
the ever-loving u--
i will probably twist
and squirm

but in the end look back
and say, i did that
for this,
and this will be a thing
i will have wanted
to have done that for.

because that
is the thing
about cocoons:
they press one down
into
a series of
single shapes--
the fugal t,
the ever-loving u.

pontificatin'

it's always good to be reminded in an at least quasi-gentle manner of one's faults. for example, i am a hypocrite. i'm allowing the fact that someone else got something out of an audition i didn't get anything out of to get me down, and that's just ridiculous. i always tell other people (read: "pontificate on about the idea") that singing isn't really a competitive sport, and yet here i am getting all blah blah over something i really am happy about: i really really want my friends to succeed. hell, i want my enemies to succeed. their success makes trumping them eventually all the sweeter. that was mostly a joke. but i really really really want my friends to succeed. and their success has nothing to do with my failure. this is not new territory.

i've been getting away from the essentials recently, so it's just as well to be brought back to them: i'm not good enough. i'm not good enough, and that's okay. it's time for me to stop being over-rewarded for potential. it's good, you know, to know that i'm not good enough, because it fans the flame. i don't want to protest too loudly against selling out and losing my soul, because if i do do so eventually (or if i am in the process of doing so as i write), it'll be downright embarrassing to have some written record of my medium-youthful idealism staring me in the face-ooty. BUT it's not like i want to do that thing where you become some sort of barbie doll opera singer. HOWEVER, there is no need to continue at my current level of unprofessionalism. except for fear. and fear deserves to be looked in the face.

now, let's not assume a causal relationship here. the theoretical changes i am proposing have to do with a., a renewed attack on the weaknesses of my voice, and b., projecting self-confidence. but i don't think i necessarily would have gotten what i'd auditioned for if i had had both projected self-confidence and lessened vocal flaws at the audition. there's no need to assume that i did something wrong at the audition. i just wasn't good enough, or not right for the part. either way is acceptable.


i'm mid-struggle. i'm usually mid-struggle. i haven't tried taking a step back in a while. i've been ensconced so thoroughly in the middle of chaos that i haven't been looking at the larger picture--or maybe the larger picture can't become clear until 90% of its details are worked out in chaos. and with me, i never know whether i'm actually seeing a big picture, or just some exciting but delusional dream-picture. so i don't know if what i'm proposing is going to work.

i had a thought earlier: it's that i should leave the meting out of justice on myself to a higher power than myself. i mean, i don't know--i'm not sure about this. not that i honestly believe i can stop anything from happening to me if i make sure i pay for whatever i consider myself guilty in. it's the idea that nothing that can be done to me is worse than what i can do to myself. call me crazy ("willingly," may be the response to that) but it provides a certain measure of comfort to know that i've been plunging myself into the deep all these years, as hermia does not say.

and it provides a certain amount of comfort to attempt to break certain habits of thought because i want to sing better. it's not for myself; it's for my voice. talk about your disingenuous projects.

the point is that i don't have to feel bad about not getting that part. i wasn't good enough, or they didn't want me. either way is fine. and this leaves me free to be really really excited for my friend, as he deserves.

something stupid this way comes

i think why i keep coming back to poetry is because...well, it might have something to do with narcissistic self-obsession, but i think it also has to do with the fact that poems NEVER express what you think you want them to. or what i want them to, at least. and what singing has taught me is that this isn't a bad thing. you don't control what you make.

someday i'll go back to the metropolitan museum of art, and i'll go and find that late monet painting of the stroked-in water lilies against the purple ground, and i'll cry, not just because it's beautiful, but because i'll remember seeing it the first time, and my tears from then.

right now, i'm shaking with a sadness born of longing. it's a beautiful feeling...a summer feeling.

religious poem

i looked down

and thought, what the hell did i bring?

what was i thinking, to wish to place

gold and myrrh into tiny hands, as if

he could even close his pellucid fingers

around such heavy things?

his eyes were closed

and his mother looked

wary, as if we would

attempt to take him

or say one

of a thousand things

she'd already heard,

and i thought, what the hell

am i doing here?

and then he woke,

and i looked to his face

and realized that

son of god or no,

son of god or no,

no journey of mine

had ever been

less of a waste.

his hand was

barely big enough

to wrap

around my finger.

later when we'd left

i thought back to nights

crossing the desert

to come to him--

the scent of frankincense

had been thick

when i held it to my face,

the sick longing dreams

of a king i had had

had been tinged

with that smell.

and then i thought of

the smell of him

and knew

that even such sickness

was a benediction:

nothing

had passed,

but all

was changed.

hell probably not!

this is my own personal bete noir (aside from virginia woolf):

as a semi-professional opera singer who hopes to eventually become less semi-professional and more professional (okay, so my professional goals are basically limitless, but i really haven't even begun to attempt to make them happen), it bugs me when people talk about image, because to me, it doesn't seem right. not that i have any objection to dressing nicely for auditions or portraying enough confidence to have auditionees not be worried about whether or not i can shoulder the responsibility of a role (although, though i don't have an objection to this second thing, i'm also not very good at it). but i just feel like all the good advice in the world--on what to wear, how to think, what to portray, etc. etc. etc.--isn't going to make up for, for lack of a better word, bravery.

why are we singing? seriously. there are some brilliant voices out there that i don't connect to at all, because the person producing the sound is sheltered so far back behind the packaging provided by image consultants and agents. why is nobody bothering us about what we put into our sound? they are perfectly willing to talk about the ferocity of the competition and that being why we all have to lose twenty pounds, but, no, nothing about spirit, struggle, or what can't be sold... i've been reading little women; i sound a little louisa may alcott-ish right now.

i'm not talking about acting. marilyn horne couldn't act, from what i've seen. it's anecdotal that joan sutherland couldn't act. marilyn horne just OWNED the stage, because she was willing to share what she could do. as voice students, we get so used to people telling us how to hone our sound that we forget why we even wanted to make the sound in the first place--now i'm going to channel e.l. koningsburg (sp?) in up from jericho tell when i say that i think we sing because we want to share. but the whole thing about learning to sing is that that gift--the song, as we produce it--gets sent back to us continually in our lessons, because we're not doing it "right." the focus gets lost; we think we're not giving the right gift. but what the lessons are rejecting isn't the gift itself--it isn't what we want to share that is being shaped and changed (i mean, hopefully this is the case. it has been with all the teachers i've loved). it's, more simply, how we share it. we ourselves aren't being rejected. our sound, the gift we want to give, isn't being rejected. it's just the parts of the sound that are themselves covering up the gift--distorting it, perverting it, controlling it--that are being rejected. and said parts can feel like the most personal parts of all that we're offering, because they're the ones we understand the best, the ones we've put the most of what we want to be into...the parts of us that are the best in control.

when i was doing the paper on azucena, i read some stuff about how people (scholars--it's a cool little subgenre that scholars of opera but not music fall into, they get to really get into the "bodily" aspects of feeling and emotion at relatively NO consequence to themselves; opera becomes this segregated act that they don't have to interrogate, and they jump into writing these vaguely insulting and pretty ridiculously irresponsible books of "criticism" that made me turn to bakhtin as a breath of fresh air despite the fact that i didn't really understand the idea of the chronotope except in mild flashes--at least he was a generous thinker, someone who valued accuracy, demonstrating, to me, that which is operatic with much more acumen than many other people who actually write on the topic of opera) think of opera as a bestial scream, a bodily function, devoid of rational meaning. i don't agree with this; i think opera acknowledges the operatic in life much more than it shuts out the real world with its music. but i do agree that what appeals in an operatic (or any other genre of) voice is its uniqueness. a sung note isn't just unique in the voice; it's unique in the moment. it points out its own existence in a way that shatters divisions between reason and body (i'd argue this out more thoroughly, but a., you don't exist, reader, and b., you probably wouldn't care if you did...thanks for getting this far!)--and our training points us toward making these notes unique as possible, by clearing out the obfuscations our self-image puts on our self-expression. singing demands the self itself, not some self we want to have.

which brings us back to the subject of image. is it any wonder that we struggling singers can't express that which is really and truly in us, that so many of our voices sound beautiful but dead, when we're being constantly bombarded with these external mandates on such topics as how we should look and what we should sing and where we should sing and how we should act? it's the "how we should look" one, honestly, that steams me most. i got into opera in part because i'm too tall to act shakespeare. it's just the truth: i am too tall to play viola, so i turned to opera. opera is home to a lot of people who aren't magazine-perfect--or, in the case of such singers as marianne anderson, who aren't magazine-acceptable in their time, no matter how utterly gorgeous they may be. i feel like there's a tradition of acceptance in opera that this whole movement to make everyone conform to some standard of beauty that will "sell" to audiences is stealing away. i could be wrong; my knowledge base is ridiculously slim. but, damnit, in this world where t.v. is supposed to be showing us something like reality-plus all the time, it's amazing that there's still some corner in which these external, "realistic" values aren't enslaving us...or there could be said corner, if it'd just be allowed to survive. 40-year-old women singing 16-year-old girls is amazing. it's amazing because it gets at a truth that's deeper than the external: gounoud's juliette isn't 16; she isn't 40; she isn't white, black, hispanic, asian, half-hispanic half-icelandic, quarter-cherokee, or even a woman necessarily--she's a sound, just as nobody in this world is anything more or less than a sound, a soul, a light, a deep dark...a body-mind, a thing. externals matter, of course, but opera teaches us how goddamn little they have to.

that said, i'm not about to go to a different extreme, and dress crappy for auditions and act unprofessional (though, again, i've got to work on that)--and, honestly, if some management wanted to sign me, i'd lose up to 20 pounds, if they asked nicely...or if they demanded. but this is in part because i have to learn to submit, to divide myself from what i don't need. if i have to lose 20 pounds to sing, i'll do so, because it will be an exercise (pun only slightly intended) in finding a solution, which, for me, is another facet of what singing is about--losing 20 pounds without losing anything i value in myself--just as acting more professional would be the same sort of challenge--acting professional within parameters i can handle, which don't stifle me or make me feel untrue to myself.

and it's in part because i don't want to stand in my own way. i might be a purist, but i do believe in purity in adversity. it's sort of a twist on what elizabeth bennet says about poetry in regards to love: i'm strong in myself, so testing myself makes me stronger, feeds my strength (but if i'm weak, then i should get out the kitchen). that is, i don't think i'm strong. "strong" is probably a bad word to use--i sincerely doubt it'd be even in the top fifteen words that sprang to anyone else's mind in regards to my character. i mean something like "self-convinced." i might actually mean "driven" (though again, it's not exactly a striking attribute)...i may be stupid and weak and small, but i refuse to give up being who i am. i'm not about to defy the gods with a massive display of self-faith; it's not anything so positive as self-faith. it's desperate, in fact--i have a need to be who i am; it's always been that way. but within that parameter, because i can't change, i want to accept the things that come as me--i want to work them out as myself--and that makes my sound what it is. i am my sound. i won't be leeched out of myself to make me palatable to a larger market share. i will change and change and change, but i won't go.

hopefully.

from hades. why do i identify with that stone bastard so full heartily?

to persephone

strong

the depth

to this circadian rhythm--

its dance

haunts

the vein.

a pulse

against itself,

the figure

of lying infinity,

lying

alone:

we are joined;

your heart

beats as

mine; i

touch it

here within.

feel the

pulse press

into the skin of

my panting love.

i have called up

the dying gods

of winter

to lay me before

the bruise-shadow

of your feet,

the shadow

that crests

your footprint.

thus

memory intersects

thirst,

thus draws out

the falsely

infinite: the touch of your lips

against themselves. you close your

mouth, and summer comes.

erroneously self-reminded of proust

i hope to god this is a rough draft.

summer teaches how to forgo

summer teaches

how to forgo

what one loves

best:

turn the salt-touched

skin,

the crusted

lip

to benediction--

one sends up

the high gloss

of summer evening

as a paean to rain.

it is

sweet

to beg

in memory

for the scent

of wet asphalt

to linger,

for the water-soft

bark-of-trees scent

to stay

on the still wind

of impermeable

summer night,

the manifested scent of rain

a memory

of what rolling time

took--

until not the scent

but the plea

becomes rain's

representative.

my darling,

press your memory

hot

like living wire

to mine.

i have lived

once

in you

and

my life

is now complete,

recomplete,

resown,

rereaped,

the hovering shapes

of the earth

and sky

remade

as

your face

and earth

and sky

nowhere

to be

seen.

ahem.

the heart is a spiral

the heart is a spiral, against which its just

beat presses, face first, beat's breath a clothing

fog upon the heart made window glass, less

flesh than constant display, heart's red show cleaved

to shaking rounds, spiralling suck, a rose

whose petals run into a pit, the grade

at which they plunge steep as the plunging grave.

to become the heart's beat--to will the cleave

of face to rose, the surge of breath that rises

against the tilting petal, the sigh's jut

through lungs and mouth a press no less, no less

than that of glass against the heart enclosed.

to breathe against the rose, to clothe

heartbeat in the half-death of breath, unbraid

the strand of rose and glass and heart, unclean

the blood veining up the words, leave unblessed

the point of this unseaming, adjust

the glass around the rose;

exhort the breath that out of the mouth rose

to touch nothing, not even glass, to watch the heart just

spiral, and if within there beats a dream unclothed,

to hold back even death before the unsplit heart, the great

spiralling red, to hold back even breath. cleave

away, cleave away those delirious things, worth less

than the spiral value of the glass,

by which the panting breath upon the rose

imagined itself. this distance just,

clothed

in the gradation

of cloven

sanctity, split, cleaved,

the beat from the heart, the beatless

heart, the heartless grade

of the slip of the rose

toward the clothing

grave, the infinite jut.

the just

grave, the retrograde

spiral, the cloth

of breath on the rose

fleeting, the raw glassless

heart stopped, cleaved

from its spiraling.

methinks i do protest a reasonable amount considering

my heart is too crammed with ash to write about meistersinger. it all sounds like disney film music after the prince has just left the princess for the first time and she's staring after him wistfully (or the other way around, if it's aladdin). the whole time i was listening to the quintet, i was envisioning ariel gazing dreamily at the point at which prince eric had just disappeared. figuratively speaking. actually i was more thinking, "this music is making me ill. what the hell is the point, even, of non-sturm-'n'-drang-y wagner?" things that are badass: the liebestod. things that are not: the prize song.

maybe i could just use that as the title of my paper.

it was kind of like when i went to see die fliegender hollander (sp?--it's just so much more fun of a title than the flying dutchman, but i guess i'll go with that), and was underwhelmed. not by the singing, much of which was very good (though the baritone, a., wasn't, and b., had developed his own version of the park and bark, which was the stalk and talk [he didn't need no stinking sustained line, OR to use his knees when he walked! he did what he wanted!]), but by the piece itself. the whole time i was like, "this is supposed to be wagner? this is to real wagner what strauss's operas are to strauss's songs. seriously. this is the musical theater version of wagner." not that i don't like musical theater. but for the most part i don't like strauss operas (rosenkavelier? come on. it's so self-conscious it's ridiculous, and you can't even call it ridiculous because it knows it's ridiculous so you just have to call it freaking ridiculously self-conscious. and salome, which i do kind of like, still seems to have been written in an apologetic attempt to live up to beardsley's illustrations), and i really don't like dutchman.

and while i can see that meistersinger is better, or at least less rough, than dutchman, it's still got that dutchman-y, musical theater-y, song and dance-y feel to it. it's the emma to dutchman's northanger abbey, except that i like both northanger abbey and emma. oh, don't pretend you don't know what i'm talking about. it's got a certain degree of self-forgiveness that i just can't get into. even if i wanted to, which i don't. in meistersinger, wagner knows what he's doing. in tristan, he either doesn't know or doesn't care what he's doing. and that uncertainty, the uncertainty expressed in tristan, for me, right now, makes art art--uncertainty, or lack of control, makes for art that i respond to. because i'm someone who's living in uncertainty, i'm therefore living as uncertainty, for uncertainty, and nothing so completely self-credulous as meistersinger can touch me.

i'm even tempted to do the full marxist, and take an adorno-ish stance by condemning meistersinger as a really IRRITATING example of bourgeois what-have-you-ness. blah blah national art blah blah c major blah blah fairy godfather and shoe cobbler hans sachs, go ahead and reject the blonde kid! GOD KNOWS you wouldn't want to be anything like king marke! king marke had something to die for; you don't appear even to have that.

of course, if i could do this assignment thoroughly, i might feel better about it...or i might just get really really frustrated with how much i don't like meistersinger, as opposed to the merely very large amount of frustration toward it that i currently carry.

ah, how sweet it is to whine about something vaguely amusing. i like this adorno, though not as much as his thing on mahler. adorno is determined to tear wagner up from the floor up, at least in the first half of this in search of wagner thing. what i like best about adorno is that he's not frightened of getting personal; though i think that his attack falters somewhat by being placed on shifting ground in this particular book (in the mahler one, it was different, as far as i remember), i feel like he also makes it clear that he's talking about his particular viewpoint--it's a need-based argument; he needs to be very stringent with wagner, especially because this work was published first in '52. and within that parameter, that of his need to condemn, he functions brilliantly. the brilliance of personal need is never an issue with me. i like things more when their authors' preoccupations show up in them. at the sfmoma, they have a few matisses, and though i like the green lady in the hat, my real favorites are the color sketches he did of indeterminate, bright-rendered landscape. i like them because they share the personal; they aren't guarded. this preference probably shows up in my own stuff; you could never accuse anything i write of being, you know, polished. if i were to have a sense of something like an aesthetic, it would certainly include unfinished-ness in its parameters.

maybe at some point this will change--maybe at some point i'll understand how a person can stand to listen to meistersinger with any degree of complacency, for example. any degree of complacency that he or she can still occupy, considering the fullness of wagner's own complacency in the work. maybe if i hadn't been reading the adorno, i wouldn't be seeing so much to object to in the opera. but i don't know. i watched the ring on t.v. when i was five or three or something. it's pretty much my earliest memory. my mom was falling asleep on the outside of the tv, and siegfried was dressed vaguely as mary martin in peter pan on the inside of the tv, and erda came out the trap door, and it was all verrry exciting. meistersinger is not like the ring. it is nauseatingly self-assured, and does not push itself in any direction that touches me. i really can't handle sachs musing on sacral german art. and i can't handle this nonsense about spontaneous crowning of master-poets and jokey riots. BAH.

i mean, if wagner wanted, like the harvest moon shines, to muse on, in utter fatuity, about aesthetics, he should have come to the future, followed my example, and gotten himself a blog.

in which i remind myself, erroneously, of laura riding

i have turned my back for the time being

i have turned my back

for the time being

on longing.

i wish to take a stab

at wanting, because

wanting is so much

feasibler

for one

alone.

take the depicted

st. sebastian

in several much-vaunted paintings:

to be tied up and stabbed

all over with arrows,

some would see this

as longing, but

longing has no

true metaphoric

bearing

on his

situation--

it is wanting

that st. sebastian achieves

against his sharp-barked tree.

he has succeeded

in truly experiencing

the stab of desire.

for a figure of longing

with tree and arrow,

the inviolate son of william tell

will do well.

dude.

if i had an attic

if i had an attic

i would find things i'd stored there

years later--

mementos of trips taken,

dresses i'd grown too full for,

ornaments for holidays

and spotted diaries

full of a life

i remembered living

but never lived, pages

crammed

with the testimony

of someone

i remembered being

but wasn't me,

the recalled feel

of cloth that never touched

my skin. the garments' emptiness

within their trunks

would be nothing new

to me, who never

had filled them,

but i would recall

myself, clearly enfolded

in their swirling patterns--and

the trips, cross-country, face

pressed close

to the hot window

of a car i never was in.

and suddenly to realize

that the dust-crammed objects

surrounding me were

never

a part of my life...

and that

the attic

did not exist.

and to cup

my palms

and color them

the color

of fine wine.

unfolding, unravelling

specific creation song

there was a god without a name

who created

several things, such as

cinnamon,

amber

with its light-trapping flaws,

death,

the wheel,

delicate antennae

that stood out against the air

and touched the wind

as if it were a solid thing,

the metaphor.

in the cupping of his hands,

from the touch

of the edges of his palms

against each other,

he took sensation

and created a flower

whose many petals

lay smooth and long

against each other.

while he waited

for her to open,

a god that lived in fire

touched her

with blazing fingers, and

each of her long petals

became a ridge of fire.

consume yourself,

the fire god breathed,

as i have consumed myself,

and the hot wind

of his words

fanned the flame

he had set on her.

her creator set her down

on a lake like glass

and she floated, burning,

even when the fire went out

and left her petals ragged stubs--

she burned in memory

and floated far away

from the touch of anything.

she turned away

from the touch of her reflection.

she turned away

from the touch of her own name.

the flesh healed itself

while she turned away--

years and years she turned,

and unnoticed her edges sealed over.

she came to the edge of the lake

where other things grew...

they liked her--

her color, her shape,

the smell of ash that

cored the sweetness of her scent--

they asked her name.

she did not answer

until she looked into the water

like glass

and stared back at herself,

and then said

her name was peony.

and they gave her ground

and she found

herself laying

roots.

this story

does not end.

really really

today someone told me that there was a point, in their depression, when they sat on the edge of a fountain in the snow for two hours looking at a hot dog they'd bought but hadn't eaten. which is the saddest--and the funniest--thing i've ever heard, and it makes me feel so much better. i don't know why it's good to hear that someone else has gone through this--it's not just the sitting in one place, unable to move; it's the hot dog. because i've totally done that. not in the snow and not with a hot dog, but i've stared at food for lengthy periods of time before.

there are people around me for whom hearing my problems would not be a burden. i have no judgment, so i don't know who they are...but there are people around me who i don't have to worry about hurting by being myself.

this is what i mean: it's extremely painful, but i'm so grateful. i'm being rescued by some part of me that realized it was time to stop being so shut out from myself, so locked in. i can't leave the pain part unacknowledged, because the pain is important. when it hurts, it hurts like a bitch. nobody is more tired than myself of having panic attacks in theory class, though probably its teacher runs a close second. but when i'm not afraid or anxious, i'm happier than i've ever been. literally. i'm finally capable of feeling at peace--not deadening myself to the point of numbness with food or books or alcohol or movies. and though that means that i'm also capable of feeling really really scared...i mean, at least i can finally feel scared.

the point is, thank you, person who told me about staring at the hot dog. i really really appreciate it.

she said it to no one

i'm not wild about the following's style of poetry, but i'm interested in the idea of telling the truth...what do i do with pain? what do i write? what sound do i inscribe against pain? it's an interesting question, even. i have an opportunity, here.

the fall

is there a point

to regret?

that which

i have been

too damaged

to try, too

piecemeal

to

accept--

i write

words

that run

down the face

of the truth.

they have

little to do

with their own

beauty.

is there

anything

to regret--

anything,

truly,

to mourn?

the velvet husk

splits, torn;

the blossom

presses through;

i feed

its root

this mangled

tongue

and words

rain down,

split,

thrust through,

pulsing with longing.

is there anything

to regret?

is anything

so totally

lost?

no sunrise;

no sunset;

no wind, no

swift-fallen drop

of rain--

thank you, darkness--

thank you, hell god--

you prepare me

as a banquet--

you lay me out,

you turn me out

into a feast--

for within this

sucking

darkness

there is

a great

tenderness

that batters me

as a heart.

my love

unfolds.

my love

trains

my tears

to be

its own.

my love

meets

my mouth--

my love

sanctions

my end--

my love

invites

my fall.